Poll Numbers Wrong City’s Name Change Strongly Opposed

Cancel those orders for new address stickers. City voters are unlikely to add Falls back to the name Spokane.

Poll results reported on the front page of Thursday’s Spokesman-Review, which showed heavy support for a city name change, were wrong.

Because of a tabulating error by the polling firm, the numbers for the two choices in the question were reversed.

In reality, more than three-fourths of city voters polled earlier this week said they would vote to keep the city’s name the same.

Only 14 percent said they’d vote to change it to Spokane Falls.

That’s a slam-dunk for the status quo and “a real screw-up” on the part of the polling firm, said Brad Coker, president of Mason-Dixon Political/Media Research Inc.

“I apologize,” Coker said. “It was an innocent mistake. We finished the polling at midnight, and at 2 a.m., I typed the wrong numbers in the categories.”

Coker said he didn’t notice the mistake in that question when all of the results later were prepared for the newspaper and KHQ-TV. The question was one of about 20 in the poll.

“I’m embarrassed,” he said. “‘Keep it Spokane’ was so clearly ahead.”

Spokesman-Review editor Chris Peck also apologized for publishing bad information.

“The numbers given to us by the pollster should have raised questions in our newsroom,” Peck said. “In hindsight, we see that we should have challenged the results because they clearly seemed at odds with what our reporters and editors know about our community and what we have been hearing on the street.”

Peck said the newspaper has decided not to publish any further results from the recent poll.

“Under these circumstances, publishing other results from this poll likely would only add to the confusion generated by the mistake made in the Spokane name-change results,” Peck said.

“Our community doesn’t need to be debating poll results in the last days before the election. As a newspaper, the best service we can provide readers now is to focus on issues, candidates, and urging people to vote,” he said.

A proposal to change the city’s name may be put to voters next spring, along with several changes to the City Charter.

The reversal of fortune disappointed, but did not discourage, Nate Grossman, a prime supporter of the change.

The task of changing so many minds is daunting, but “there’s still four or five months to go,” he said.

“We’re still pretty excited, from the people we’ve talked to,” Grossman said. “We just have to get the right message out, that this won’t cost anybody anything.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: The right numbers